Why Are We Talking Like Strangers (Yes, It’s Another Ex-Boyfriend Story)

On Monday, after a week of feeling pretty ill and not up to talking to anybody, I woke to the odd sensation of actually wanting to say hello to my most recent ex-boyfriend. You see if I get sick I close down completely – I don’t want to see anybody, I don’t want to talk to anybody, just leave my general vicinity and don’t enter my bubble.

My ex and I have been in this little pattern lately where we talk for a little bit and then I send him a message, he sees it but for whatever reason doesn’t reply, and I sit around feeling like a dickhead putting effort into a clearly one-sided…

…I want to say “friendship” but the only word I can use to describe it would be “thing.” I’ve been through this before on my blog but for those of you who are new: it all feels weird because in the past, more often than not, he would always put in the effort to reply even if it is just an emoji. Yes, even after we had decided to “break-up” we still conversed as I would with any ex-boyfriend – as if they were a good friend.

But I mean all’s fair in love and war, rah rah rah; he doesn’t have to reply if he doesn’t want to.

So I decide to say hello (or as I put it, “how’s things”) to see what he’s been up to and he replies “was thinking about you today” with a smiley face, then proceeds to talk to me.

It’s not until a day later that a thought pops into my head: If he had been thinking about you then why didn’t he send a message to say hello?

That’s a reasonable question, no? It had been a week since my last message was ignored and if I’m grown up enough to go from “I wonder how he is” to “I should ask him how he is” in less than 30 seconds surely he is too. He’s at least one and a half years older than me after all.

Just because we’re no longer “in a re-la-tion-ship” doesn’t mean we suddenly have to default to awkward. Things have been fine up until now.

Then, later in the conversation, we were joking around about making deals to wash his car (because I had said I washed my car) and I sent him a message saying I would wash his car for “one million dollars” and a picture of Dr. Evil with his little pinky up near his mouth thusly:

Usually, if my ex finds something funny, he sends a lot of laughing emojis and says “that’s gold” which he did.

Then there came an awkward part, a part which made me put on my “wtf” face.

“Good one.”

He’s never said “good one” to me… ever.

I don’t think I’ve ever heard him say “good one” to anybody.

I looked at my phone thusly:

I felt like I was suddenly talking to a fucking stranger.

Honestly he has a LOT of personal stuff to sort through but I’d rather hoped that we didn’t fall back into a lack of connection. I am well aware that we are just friends so he doesn’t have to worry that I’ll take his enthusiasm in talking to me the wrong way. If he is someone that has never been friends with an ex (his words) then perhaps he doesn’t know how to be my friend with our history? Perhaps he still sees me as something more and that’s why he can’t work this all out?

Who knows? I sure as hell don’t.

Strange because he can still mention sex to me, or sexual things. Apparently that doesn’t seem to cross any invisible lines. Perhaps that’s the only kind of intimacy he is comfortable with at the moment.

I know I can’t jump to any conclusions because he is still guarded from his last relationship break up so anything he does now isn’t a true reflection of himself. THAT BEING SAID I am also not going to be a pushover or wait for any change. I could be waiting a long time and ain’t nobody got any time for that nonsense.

All I can do right now is be a friend and that’s all I actually want to be. I LIKE him as a friend.

Anyway, irony upon irony, two of my OTHER ex-boyfriends have messaged me today. One of them needs something to do with bond (from when we lived together) and the other started talking to me about cockatiels (the cockatiel I brought over a year ago that I thought was a girl is actually a boy) and how he is now an Uber driver (my ex-boyfriend not the cockatiel).

The two of them still talk to me as if we were old friends. No fucking awkward “good one’s” to be seen.

4 thoughts on “Why Are We Talking Like Strangers (Yes, It’s Another Ex-Boyfriend Story)”

Lol the last bit about the cockatiel had me laughing. I don’t talk to any of my exes expect the last one and that’s only because we have kids together. I wish he’d stop talking to me! Lol the EX-factor is too much for me. I found myself running back to just about all of them, which was a complete failure everytime. Sometimes though, being in the friendzone can be harder to handle than not talking to your ex at all.

Glad it made you laugh 🙂
I can be friends with my exes easily because when we split I guess we try to tie up loose ends and do it amicably. The thing I find so hard this time around is the fact that he left things open-ended by saying “you never know what might happen in the future” and then stopped treating me like a friend. I guess it’s more about respect and communication – with him going off the radar completely I don’t know where I stand.

Oh, I feel you! I’ve been there. I was in that boat for about 4years back and forth with the same guy until I got closure and moved on. That’s why now I don’t talk to any ex once we break up, I don’t want to get sucked back in by the “what ifs?”